As seen in FIG. 4A, a personal computer will generally have a line printer connector and a cable which is connected to a printer such as printer 40 in order to print out required data which has been processed in the computer. Thus the line printer connector uses a cable A in order to make the connection to the printer 40 from the personal computer (PC) motherboard 10.sub.m.
At the same time it has been found desirable to also display, using a display means, the status of the personal computer and any error indications which may result from diagnostic operations. Thus the problem arises as to how to provide some means for displaying error or status conditions in the personal computer (PC) with a minimal interference to and a minimal amount of extra hardware changes to the personal computer platform.
As seen in FIG. 4B, the present disclosure arranges for the interconnection of a newly modified cable AA such that while the same output connection is made to the printer 40, there is a corresponding extension cable 10.sub.c which is connected to a power control card 20 which enables signals to be provided to a display panel 30. The display panel 30 has three digital displays demarked as display position 0, display position 1 and display position 2. Additionally, the display panel 30 provides a series of light emitting diode signals and a set/reset button.
While the prior art and otherwise normal handling of adding a display system to a PC motherboard would normally require the use of another card slot with the insertion of a printed circuit board for the card slot, the present disclosure enables the elimination of any need for a printed circuit slot on another printed circuit board. No changes are required to the hardware of the personal computer motherboard except for a new internal Y-ribbon cable, designated cable AA (FIG. 4B), which shares the common line printer interface but still does not disrupt the normal printer operations that are concurrently ongoing.